It has been pretty much as lacklustre as a day one could have, and I don’t mind lacklustre, I have no desire to fight it, it shines its lights in my eyes and then I am trying to figure out do I turn left or right on Erin Mills Parkway and is there an advanced green and then the distraction is gone as we travel in opposite paths and I drive over the medium.

Ooopsy.

Carry on by foot during day and night. My instincts are sharper.

It’s April 6th and we’ve had snow so that’s put everyone in some kind of funk. Conversations are easily started with talk about aches and pains and waiting for signs of life in the garden. Basically, for the last mild month, everybody was as happy as a kid in candy shop, or is it a pig in the shit, now everyone is just behaving like kids without wi-fi or CEOs for that matter. (Hint: children often wear suspenders, CEOs tend not to.  Kids wear sports shoes and CEOs wear NEW SHOES. Man, those CEOs are divas when they come to their shoes (including golf).

I think most of us came out of hibernation a bit too soon and are just a bit irritable at how much food prices have gone up over the last six months.

Gas and oil prices. Say what?

The weak Canadian dollar. Well, there go our imports.

Except of course for guns, large portions, getting ahead, violence in the media and porn. Yeah, I think I read that on the Republican ticket this year.

I could have been daydreaming.

And what about all those if you need anything we’re there for you talks I used to get from the corporate clan – they ain’t there because if you – or me really, if I reach out, then that suggests there’s something wrong and that means “delete” – the memory, the response, the duty.

To me the sound of a delete key stroke is a deafening scream, “you don’t exist.”

My punctuation, however, brings all the boys to the yard, because their life is better than mine, and I try to teach them but they try to charge.

All I have are good ideas. All I seem to encounter with organizations (HIV, Community and Social Services, etc….) is you ain’t as good as your ideas.

And I ain’t good with my phone.

Or a lot of shit.

And then some shit, like caring for someone when they are suffering, I just get into it, It’s like my Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. I am right for that part.

As I move around my community, I get the sense that no parts are right for me.

It’s a feeling like I am a lost cause kind of day.

And a grey April 6th. that is testing me.  Teachers, and fellow students, let’s set that doomsday clock to 11:59 again. Just for old time sake. It would capture the mood of the day wouldn’t it?

I went for a walk. I could feel the dampness in my body and it probably played out on my face.  No one said hello to me and the guy at the Dollar Store asked me if I was OK.  I was just a bit lightheaded from walking, from pinched nerves, for pushing myself.  He probably thought I had a drinking problem as I expect he does, I tried to utter that it’s a longterm side effect of a previous treatment, but I mumbled and then tripped going out the door because I am not getting used to my progressive visionware.

I think I shall invest in a large magnifying glass.

I walked home, avoiding the grey skin of the grey faces.  I suppose I was giving off a bit of a Joan Crawford vibe today.

I hunch and limp and then had the wherewithal to correct myself, it would be a Bette Davis face I was giving off (without the eyes that songs are written about).  Mine are bloodshot and I am going to the Drug Store to buy eye drops.

Yes, the good old generic ones.  I don’t think there’s much of a difference, although I am getting a bit too comfortable saying there’s not much difference when the difference is cost and cost is the barrier. So there kind of is a difference.

The difference is I can’t always make the choice I would like to make.

Yes, it’s that day, the negative thoughts are free falling, like spots and threads flying across my vision.  Feeling jubilant, that’s not in the cards today.  I finished Season 4 of House of Cards so I am without distraction for this evening.

Anti-inflammatories. Opiates. A cocktail.

Wait a second, there are still two seasons of Nurse Jackie.

That’ll do.

Along the river, there were just starlings, cowbirds, grackles. Nobody’s favourite birds. I wonder if they were commenting on me.

I am your friend.

I stormed home, a stop at the liquor store, a few errands, going for daily walks, a few self-care check marks.

I left the flock of birds chirping behind me.  A starling stared down at me and twisted his neck to one side to the other as if sizing me up in my final steps along the river.

And I said to the bird rather flippantly, “I was hoping you would be a blue jay or a cardinal but instead you are a starling.”

You are Blanche, you are.

See, if you draw back on random memories, creative connections and my foibles along with the 800,000 people that live and drive in Mississauga, it’s pretty easier to turn a grey day and make it non-grey. A transition day.

OK.

OK is a form of goodness.